Painting begins...and continues...and continues

Painting was initially thought to be a pretty quick and easy task. Sarah and I, along with my parents help, painted the entire living room, both hallways, the kitchen, and the master suite of our house in a single weekend. With that experience under our belt, I figured that painting a single room the size of the media room would take a single day of work between Sarah and I. Boy was I wrong!

We settled on official NCAA licensed Texas A&M flat maroon by Glidden for the media room. There were a couple of reasons we settled on this paint color. It is a very rich and dark color which will help the planned high definition projector look brighter, the flat finish will reduce reflections, and I'm a pretty big fan of my alma mater. Granted, my Aggies are a little success challenged on the football field in the recent past, but I still love my school. Also, the media room will double as a sports/man cave for me, so Aggie maroon was a perfect color choice.

After calculating that we have 1004.3 square feet of surface to paint (yeah, I'm an engineer) I figured that we'd need about 5 gallons of paint to put two coats on the room assuming 200 sq. ft. per gallon. Just to be sure, we bought 6 gallons from Home Depot.

Unfortunately, painting a brightly colored room with such a dark shade of paint creates a problem we hadn't planned on. The drywall practically sucked the paint off the surface and made the entire first coat look blotchy and streaky. Also, it took way more paint to cover the walls and ceiling than we had planned. The 6 gallons we purchased were barely enough to give the room two complete coats, and it was obvious that the room needed at least a third coat!

The first day of painting took all of Friday, Jan 2nd. We went to home depot in the morning and then painted straight from 11am until 11pm, with a few breaks in between. Desperate for a break around dinner time, I even willingly sat through watching The Notebook with Sarah. As much as she cried at the end of the movie, I dreaded continuing the painting task. After completing the first coat, the room looked awful. Nothing sucks the motivation out of me like poor results. The streaks and splotches are clearly visible in these pictures we took with our iPhones. Trust me, it looked worse in person.

Struggling to put the first coat on the ceiling

Results of first coat unimpressive

The second coat went quicker, only taking about 4 hours on Saturday. Parts of the room began to show the true color I envisioned when we started, but there were still areas of streakiness.

Beginning third coat

The third coat went even quicker, taking only 3 hours on Sunday. I figure that the first couple coats helped seal the surface, allowing the third coat to spread evenly around the walls and ceiling.

Finally, after three days of inhaling paint fumes, the room is beginning to look like we had planned. The dark maroon color has really helped reduce the glare and brightness of the room. Also, I love the way the baseboards and door trim stand out against the dark walls.

These pictures really don't do the room color justice. The blinds are still off the windows, so there's a lot of light bouncing around. Once we recover the windows, the room will really start feeling like a media room! Next up is starting the electronics research and purchasing the theater curtains! Oh yeah, and it's time to rest!